


Choosing Happiness (ignore the haters)

by AngeNoir



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Character Study, Domestic, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Talk Shows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 06:15:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13630365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir
Summary: It's just a quiet night, Tony snorting softly against Steve's side, when the talk show host (Steve doesn't know which one; it had just been noise in the background) commented on Steve and Tony's relationship.His first instinct was (and probably, to some extent, always would be) to storm out of the penthouse and march his ass down to the recording studio.But moving would require waking Tony, and Tony had been awake for almost three days prior to this. So Steve makes a decision.





	Choosing Happiness (ignore the haters)

Steve was not blind.

 

He knew exactly what people were thinking behind the dirty looks he and Tony got while they were out in the world. Hell, it’s what people would have been thinking, or even saying, more than 70 or 80 years ago. He grew up with people spitting on what he liked, on what he was.

 

He hadn’t liked bullies or bigots back then. Nothing had changed now.

 

As it was, he had the muscles and the weighty reputation on his side now, as well as Tony. He could remember, all too clearly, what it had been like when he had _not_ been as muscled, as strong, and as unstoppable as he was currently.

 

“Hey babe,” Tony mumbled, shifting, and Steve, realizing he had tensed up and disturbed Tony, who’d been dozing against his side, settled back, stroking fingers through Tony’s hair to calm him down.

 

With a soft mutter, Tony’s eyes drooped shut again, and he wiggled his nose practically into Steve’s armpit. It took some maneuvering to get Tony in a more relaxed and less gross position, but Steve was thankful for the distraction.

 

Not that he _believed_ any of the filth being spewed by the talk show host on the television, but still. The principle of the matter remained, and Steve was already planning his line of attack. Using his name and his face to vilify love was never something he would stand for, not in the least, and he knew objectively that he could tell Tony tomorrow which talk show had said what and a team of lawyers would descend like flies on a corpse.

 

That didn’t make it easier to hear the carefully worded “politically correct” speech that the host had tried to dance with, tried to use double-speak and quiet implications to say that Steve - well, not Steve, that _Captain America_ \- hadn’t fought for this country to “see its citizens become so coddled and needy that they couldn’t handle truth,” to paraphrase the host. There was a lot of bullshit about family values, about the lack of responsibility, hell, the host had even worked in somehow an anti-abortion stance.

 

It hit Steve, like a knife in the chest, and it never stopped hurting. The future, for all that there were advances like flying cars, aliens, and something as sophisticated and elegant as Iron Man, was still as ugly and coarse as he remembered. The only real difference between Steve’s past and his present was the level of public affection.

 

He had been working on that, actually. Tony was a physically affectionate person - he loved leaning on others, loved to press a kiss to the Steve’s nose or cheek or the corner of Steve’s mouth, and the first few months Steve had been reluctant to allow Tony such liberties, particularly where others could see. It seemed almost indecent, and definitely unseemly. But when he realized that no one blinked twice when a husband and wife held hands, or when a girl gave her boyfriend a kiss when she left, he had made it a priority to get comfortable with small tokens of affection such as that.

 

He had died in the war - okay, not really, but still, the principle was the same - because no one could accept him as he was back in the States. No one wanted a bisexual skinny asthmatic with health issues standing at their door or sitting for an interview. The army, at least, didn’t expect their soldiers to do anything except die for some greater cause, even to this day.

 

Tony mumbled some math equation under his breath, then tucked himself closer against Steve’s side. Steve looked fondly down at Tony Stark.

 

That was another thing he hadn’t planned on - _Tony_. Tony, with his too-sharp smiles and too-knowing glances. Tony, with his deliberate attempts to be brash and in your face so that the only person bringing up his weak points was Tony himself. There were no words to describe how lucky Steve was to have found Tony, and if all it took to make Tony happy was to wrap an arm around his shoulders while they were at the movies, link fingers with Tony while they were watching the game in the stadiums, or bussing a kiss to Tony’s cheek while waiting to cross the street… it was no hardship.

 

And if there _were_ muttered words, there weren’t any when Steve turned to level the full weight of his glare in that direction. If there were people who wanted to see something different, Steve was more than willing to stare them down until they looked in a direction more to their liking.

 

He couldn’t stop them from looking. He couldn’t stop people from saying shit like that on television - or, well, he _could_ , but only after they verbalized their shitty opinion. He couldn’t change the minds of anyone who didn’t want their mind to be changed. It was disheartening and demoralizing to see.

 

But what always lifted his spirits were the letters. The letters or emails or tweets and sometimes, hell, sometimes even interviews - with kids. With teenagers, who thought the worst of themselves because they were different, because they loved differently, because they expressed themselves differently.

 

Steve remembered that, as a young man in the queerest section of Brooklyn, as a scrappy kid that threw down for no other reason except a perceived slight to a fellow queer or a lady or, really, anyone - he remembered, vividly, knowing in his bones that he was different from what others wanted him to be. That he didn’t _want_ to be anything except what he was inside. It had been so, so hard to go it alone, to try and act like he was completely unaffected by the fact that he was alone.

 

So those letters, that communication, where kids and youth and young adults and even a few seniors from his generation all told him that they were glad to know that he was like them, that he was different too - it lifted him up, buoyed his spirits even when religious leaders and pundits vilified his character, used his name in their sermons and propaganda.

 

So as he sat in their living room, looking at the clock and considering just heading up to bed - he’d have to carry Tony up to bed, but in all honesty he loved to carry Tony in his arms, so he was actually looking forward to that - staring at the television screen where the muted talk show host was still yelling, face red, pictures flying across that didn’t really explain what was being said, he thought back to those days where he had to hide who he was. He sat there, Tony snoring cutely against him (Tony insisted he didn’t snore, the little liar), and remembered old man Johnson in the apartment below, always disparaging the two spinsters that lived across the hall, insinuating the worst things about them. He remembered being in art school, of people making snide remarks to him and the other artists in the program. He remembered the first boy he had done anything with, hastily, in a dark alleyway, the boy insisting that “he wasn’t no fag” even as he had his hand wrapped around Steve’s dick. He remembered what everyone said, the dirty looks he got.

 

He still got those remarks, those dirty looks. And he had the serum; he heard and saw a lot more than people realized he heard and saw. But Steve had already spent his youth fighting at shadows, snapping at perceived insults. He had Tony, he had the freedom to dip and kiss his sweetheart in front of the Rockefeller tree without being thrown in jail. Oh, if he was determined not to revel in Tony and Tony’s affection, he could notice everything thrown their way.

 

But he just wanted to live his life, be happy, and love Tony without interruptions.

 

So, sometimes, Steve pretended not to see.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Public Enemies (The Secret Lovers Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13713555) by [msermesth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/msermesth/pseuds/msermesth)




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